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Sonos Finally Made an Outdoor Speaker — Well, Sort Of

We’ve known that Sonos would be making an outdoor speaker for some time. It was a logical next step. And today, we got to see exactly what that was. Well, sort of.

The company, in partnership with Sonance, a reputable audio company that’s known for its in-wall and in-ceiling speakers, announced the Sonos Architectural by Sonance. Essentially, Sonos is going to be selling Sonance’s own speakers, or “a collection of installed passive speakers for indoor and outdoor use,” which have been specially engineered to work with the Sonos Amp ($599). They’re not exactly Sonos speakers, but they’ll work like one.

The new collection is comprised of passive speakers, meaning they won’t work like traditional Sonos speakers on their own. Instead of just plugging them in, connecting them to Wi-Fi, and then setting them up through the Sonos app, the speakers in the Sonos Architectural by Sonance collection will need to be wired to a Sonos Amp to work. Also, they’ll need to be professionally installed. The Sonos Architectural by Sonance collection features three different kinds of speakers: Sonos In-Wall by Sonance ($599 per pair), Sonos In-Ceiling by Sonance ($599 per pair), and the Sonos Outdoor by Sonance ($799 per pair). The outdoor speakers have a weatherproof design, meaning they’ll have no problem handling “humidity, water, salt spray, heat, UV rays, and freezing temperatures.”

Up to this point, you could’ve paired any passive speakers with a Sonos Connect:Amp (or Connect) to integrate them into your home’s Sonos system. According to Sonos, the big difference here is that the “Sonos Amp will automatically recognize the architectural speakers and optimize its output to bring brilliant sound right out of the box.” The In-Wall and In-Ceiling speakers will be the first third-party speakers to be compatible with Sonos’s TruePlay tuning technology. And since Sonos will sell the speakers on its website, they’ll be able to guide you through the purchase process. It’s a good deal for consumers looking to spread Sonos’s speaker system seamlessly (and invisibly) throughout their house — even if it’s not quite the outdoor Sonos speaker many were hoping for.

The Sonos In-Wall and In-Ceiling speakers are available for pre-order on Sonos’s website and they’ll be available everywhere on February 26th. Expect the Outdoor speakers to be released sometime this April.